Founder In Residence (Curi)

Who We Are: AI is the new electricity: Just as electricity transformed numerous industries starting 100 years ago, AI is now poised to do the same. AI Fund is an early stage venture firm founded by Dr. Andrew Ng in 2017. Our portfolio companies utilize AI technology and applications to improve processes and efficiency. The AI Fund team combines their experiences as AI pioneers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and operators. We are backed by a $176 million-dollar fund from top-tier VC firms.

Together, let’s build great companies that will move humanity forward.

Why Partner With AI Fund: We’ve been there. We’ve founded and scaled successful companies ourselves, and we know that creating meaningful startups is really hard. Many entrepreneurs toil with ideas for years. Many spend time building something without the foresight of limiting factors that could have been easily dismissed upfront. Accomplished execs often teeter between a desire to start a company and creating something great versus taking a job that is less fulfilling. If only someone could help with taking the risk out of turning an idea into reality and accelerate the company building process, more people would be inspired to start a company.

Coming up with great ideas, sussing them out, assembling great teams, and helping raise capital is what we do.  We shorten a process that can take years down to months. We make sure you are going after the right market, are fully validated, and are surrounded by great teammates. Lastly, we make sure you see the world through the lens of a data scientist and machine learning expert, which is the perspective any meaningful company in the future must have. 

But we also know that the process is not about us. It’s about great Founders and empowering them to do great things.

What We Seek: We are looking for passionate entrepreneurs with first-hand knowledge of the problem they have encountered or entrepreneurs that might match to a problem or idea we already have. It’s not a mandate, but ideally, we want people with experience solving business and technical problems and have a keen eye for anticipating business risks. You may have been a product manager running a product or product line before.  You may have been an engineer who has been on the front lines of helping shape a company. Or perhaps you are a proven entrepreneur who recognizes that the difference between success and failure is razor-thin, and you want every advantage you can get. Lastly, we want people who are leaders. We desire people who can hire great people, get others excited about their vision, raise capital, and make it all happen.

About PC:

Curi is focused on transforming the online shopping experience by building an intelligent, conversational product research tool that replaces overwhelming search results with personalized, context-aware recommendations. Addressing key pain points like poor search relevance, choice overload, and distrust in sponsored content, the tool allows users to describe their specific needs in natural language—like asking a knowledgeable hardware store associate—and receive curated, reliable product suggestions. We, with the support of eBay Ventures, are building a new search paradigm that combines detailed specs, real user insights, and expert-level guidance from trusted sources to help shoppers make confident decisions, all while simplifying the process and reducing the need to sift through multiple sources or irrelevant results.

• The FIR will work with the AI Fund and eBay Ventures teams to launch and scale this new business from the ground up. If you're obsessed with startups and building exceptional products this role is for you.
• Work alongside our staff to iteratively research and validate on a problem to solve that can benefit from AI/ML. This includes idea validation, product validation, market validation, and funding validation.
• Design a product and prototype it.
• Set the vision and the strategy of the portfolio company once the idea has been tested and determined product market fit.
• If all makes sense, we capitalize the company to help you stand the company up, bring in the best talent, build the product, and launch.

• Must Haves: 
• Previous management experience.
• Strategic thinking.
• Previous startup or other small/scrappy team experience.
• Competitive, entrepreneurial mindset.
• Must be a technical hands on leader (ie. still able to code or build prototypes).
• Must have system design and architecture experience.
• Must have kept up with the latest AI technological trends.
• Experience working on AI projects (even side projects for fun).
• Experience working on pitch deck and part of the fundraising efforts.
• Experience building and attracting top notch engineering and product team.

• Nice to Haves:
• Domain expertise in eCommerce or retailtech or search engine optimization.

• Accountability: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions while doing so with the highest regard for integrity. 
• Leadership: able to influence others to follow you and lead the team to a brighter future. 
• Grit. able to stick with projects and work hard through good and bad times. High pain tolerance and can perform well under stress or pressure.
• Scrappy: Takes initiative and proactively gets things done with low resources, but doing creative things, begging, borrowing, and whatever is needed in an ambiguous environment or situation.
• Ownership orientation: Demonstrated orientation of extreme ownership over all aspects of the company and extremely results-driven in nature.

At AI Fund, we are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. AI Fund believes that diversity and inclusion among our employees are critical to our success as a company, and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Selection for employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.